


Joined

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Making Out, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Mind Meld, Telepathy, Wedding Rings, self-imposed challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Joined

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madsmurf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsmurf/gifts).



  


title: Joined  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: approx. 970  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
pairing: Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: PG-13  
notes: Second of a set of five ficlets written for good friends and amazing enablers, as gifts for February 14. This one is for [](http://madsmurf.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://madsmurf.livejournal.com/)**madsmurf** , who gave me the following prompt: Charles & Erik, no-divorce AU; one morning in the year after Cuba, Charles wakes up to discover that he is wearing a ring on his left hand.  
Hopefully this is funny? ♥

  
Charles comes awake slowly. It’s still very early in the morning, and it only takes him a few seconds of looking at the clock on his bedside table to realize that he ought to be going back to sleep.

He reaches out to the other side of the bed. Ah. Still warm, then; Erik’s probably just left, and the next time Charles sees him will be at the breakfast table. He takes a moment to remember whose turn it is to cook today, and he stops at the point where his usually efficient memory informs him it’s not him. That is sufficient basis for him to roll over and try to get back to sleep, starting with running his hands through his hair.

When his left hand snags in the strands for the fourth time, however, Charles growls, and maybe slurs out several obscure French curses for good measure, and he finally brings his hand down so he can see what’s wrong with it. He can’t have done anything silly to it; besides, Erik had been the one in the handcuffs last night.

Every single train of thought in Charles’s head comes to a complete and screeching halt once he processes what he’s looking at. And then it’s everything he can do not to scream, either out loud or in his head, and arguably it’s the latter kind that will bring the entire mansion down about his ears, because he doesn’t have Sean’s mutation but he does have his own, and it is just as potent, and.

Charles is wearing a ring. A ring in beautifully polished steel. On the fourth finger of his left hand.

 _Holy mary mother of god,_ Charles thinks.

And he very deliberately did not broadcast that - but the next thing he knows the door is creaking open, and there’s a very familiar pressure in the back of his head, like the phantom sensation of hands in his hair once again, and Erik has gotten really good at responding to the link between them but why is he here, and why does he look so damn _smug_?!

“I see you’ve found me out,” Erik says, and he holds up his own left hand.

For the second time in five minutes - and it is still the same unholy hour of the morning, Charles might add, this is just too much before he’s had his morning cuppa - he flails in his head, desperately searching for any possible balance or foothold or semblance of sanity.

He already knows that the ring on Erik’s finger matches his, exactly, down to the tiniest detail. The ring on Erik’s left ring finger: and that seems to be the most important consideration of all.

There is a ring on Charles’s left hand, and there is a ring on Erik’s left hand. These have to be related events, and Charles is not in any way, shape, or form accepting the opinion, or the possibility, that this is a coincidence.

He opens his mouth to ask any of a thousand possible questions in increasing degrees of hysteria, but this is the sentence that comes out instead: “You are absolutely shite at proposals.”

Erik grins - the grin that makes Charles feel like he’s looking at a predator. “That’s not what you said last night.”

/Fuck you,/ Charles manages to think at him, before he finally cracks under the weight of the double and triple entendres hanging unsaid in the room, and he dives back into the pillows, torn right down the middle between being horrifically embarrassed, and giggling his head off.

At least blushing is an acceptable response to both of these emotions, and he thinks he might set the pillows on fire because he’s red in the face and he feels so very warm.

The bed dips and Charles yelps as he’s trapped in the blankets. He struggles and splutters and suddenly there are arms around him, holding him close, and he might just be persuaded to call off that impending attack of hysterics because Erik is laughing, and is kissing him breathless.

Charles finally succumbs to the absurdity and inevitability of it all, and he frees himself from the bedclothes, but not from Erik’s grasp - no, he’s too busy trying to pull Erik closer, for whatever definition of “close” his mind can come up with.

“I turned back from my run when I felt you woke up,” Erik says. “You were a little loud; it felt like you were tugging me back.”

“Your fault,” Charles mutters rebelliously as he peels Erik out of his t-shirt and track pants. “What else was I supposed to think when I saw the ring?”

“I didn’t say I was complaining,” Erik says, and he’s running his hands all over Charles’s skin, over and under the wrinkled, unbuttoned pyjamas. Cool fingertips, scorching kisses, and Charles has never been one to believe in the institution of marriage, not after the sterling examples he’s known, but this could work. It might. They’ve already had the worst of each other, he and Erik. They might as well have the best of each other, the silly bits and the serious ones, and just this entire year since coming back from a beach and from a sky full of missiles and distrust.

“Charles, you are a romantic,” Erik mutters, because of course he’s been listening in.

“Your romantic, apparently,” Charles says, and bites lightly down on Erik’s right wrist. He holds up his left hand and wiggles the fingers in Erik’s face.

“Yes,” Erik says, and he sounds like someone’s managed to clock him in the back of the head with a two-by-four - but more importantly, he sounds like he’s smiling, and Charles releases him, smiles back, and kisses him again.

/Yours. Always, yours./  



End file.
